Tangled events ranging from alleged diamond dealing to bribery are being unrolled in a Pretoria court, reports Stefaans Brmmer
THIS week’s corruption trial of Ferdi Barnard, Charlie Landman and Gert Marais revealed all the elements of a Frederick Forsyth novel: meetings between a “rogue” top cop and the deputy president, an alleged state assassin-turned-common crook in an unholy alliance with the cop, claims of arms-for-diamonds deals between an African rebel leader and two powerful ex-ministers …
Equally intriguing was the legal cast assembled. Prosecuting were the “untouchables” of Transvaal Attorney General Jan D’Oliveira’s crack Special Investigations Unit, led by Deputy Attorney General Antoinette de Jager.
Defending Landman was former Witwatersrand attorney general Klaus von Lieres und Wilkau, aristocratic in bearing but tainted by his active private practice since he left office for “medical” reasons last year with a huge severance package.
Incongruously, the scene for the drama was a lower court – Pretoria Regional Court, indecorous courtroom Number Four – and the threesome in the dock faced charges sparked by a paltry R20 000 alleged bribe.
Former Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) member and alleged assassin Barnard, former Brixton Murder and Robbery Squad detective Marais and suspended Brixton acting commander Landman were facing charges they had conspired in late 1994 and early last year to have a counterfeit-dollar investigation against one Fanie Nel squashed in exchange for the bribe. (Nel was subsequently convicted).
It was heard in court this week that Barnard, Marais and Landman – the latter referred to in testimony as “the big man” and “the mighty Landman” – met Nel and his brother Deon at a Roodepoort restaurant on January 6 last year. Landman, indeed, was “big” in police circles.
Before his suspension earlier this year he had a reputation as one of the country’s top murder and robbery detectives. In 1994 and last year he was heading a special investigative team into the unsolved “red mercury” murders of the early 1990s.
That investigation had been given top priority after Landman and investigative reporters took the matter to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki in 1994. By all accounts, channels between Mbeki and Landman remained open after that.
Also undisputed was the defence’s assertion that two days after the restaurant meeting, Landman saw Mbeki and Mufamadi to tell them Fanie Nel had information linking former foreign affairs minister Pik Botha (then mineral and energy affairs minister in the Government of National Unity) and former defence minister Magnus Malan to arms-for- diamonds deals with Jonas Savimbi, leader of Angola’s Unita rebels, and that they had told Landman “to go ahead with the investigation”.
Five days after that, on January 13, Landman saw Cape Town Attorney General Frank Kahn, asking him to withdraw the counterfeit dollar charges against Fanie Nel in exchange for Nel providing information against Botha and Malan, as well as on the red mercury murders. Kahn refused.
Where the accounts differed was the state’s contention that Fanie Nel never offered the information – that it was a ruse on Landman’s part to have charges against Nel withdrawn in exchange for R20 000, half of which had already been paid to Landman’s co- accused.
One may wonder why Landman would have gone to the extraordinary lengths to see the deputy president and his own minister, and then an attorney general, with a fabricated story – all for a R20 000 bribe.
But there was another twist. On the evening of Landman’s meeting with Kahn, the Nel brothers were allegedly robbed near Klerksdorp of diamonds worth more than R10- million by Barnard and two associates, who had led the Nels to believe they would introduce them to a discreet buyer.
The buyer never materialised and Barnard’s two associates made off with the diamonds after a wild shoot-out. Barnard and two co- accused are standing trial on the matter in the Klerksdorp Regional Court. The state in the present case appeared to be insinuating that Landman’s actions were connected to that diamond robbery.
Both the defence and the prosecution appeared to be letting Botha and Malan off the hook: the state by arguing Landman’s assertions were a ruse; and the defence’s statement that Landman at the time thought there was something to this information, but later found it to be untrue.
Both Nel brothers, now state witnesses, denied Fanie Nel had offered Landman the information. Intriguingly, Deon Nel did testify that the topic came up at the restaurant meeting with Landman and his co- accused, but was raised by Landman.
Deon Nel said they spoke about a Lichtenburg diamond mine, owned by businessman Albert Vermaas, which had gone insolvent. Landman, he said, told them the insolvency was because the mine’s books falsely reflected diamond production which had in fact been Botha’s Angolan diamonds.
Incidentally Vermaas was convicted this week in the Pretoria Supreme Court on 111 charges ranging from fraud to exchange control irregularities after a trial of more than five years. In his judgment, Justice F C Kirk-Cohen said Vermaas had considered asking Botha and Malan to stop the Reserve Bank “interfering in his affairs”.
* The trial was continuing at the time of going to the press